Category: A Week in Poitiers

Just over a year ago, I wrote about President Macron taking part in a ceremony to mark the admission of the writer and First World War veteran Maurice Genevoix into the Panthéon. Genevoix had fought at the battle of the Marne and had been seriously injured, losing the use of his left hand. He went on to write a series of five books, now collected as Ceux de 14 (Those of 14), based on notes recorded in the trenches. These are now regarded as one the greatest testimonies of the First World War.

On Tuesday this week, the president was again at the Panthéon to celebrate the admission of a war veteran, one whose contribution to French culture and history, like that of Maurice Genevoix, went far beyond their efforts during the war itself. However, the lives and careers of the two could hardly be more different.

Josephine Baker (born Freda Josephine McDonald) was an American-born French entertainer, Resistance agent, and civil rights activist. Her mother, Carrie, was the daughter and grand-daughter of slaves; her father’s identity has never been confirmed. Carrie married Josephine off to an older man when she was 13. She divorced him and married again two years later, this time to a man called Baker. He too was quickly divorced, but she kept the name for the rest of her life.

Starting her career in a chorus line in a St. Louis vaudeville, she later worked in Broadway revues in New York before sailing to Paris in 1925. An instant success at the age of 19, she was famed for her erotic dancing, including the ‘Danse Sauvage’, unthinkable today, in which she wore only a beaded necklace and a skirt made of a string of artificial bananas.

She was an iconic image and a symbol of the Roaring Twenties, and quickly became the highest-paid performer in Europe. Happy to play up to her image, she would walk her pet cheetah on a lead, and she drove through Paris in a convertible car upholstered in lizard skin. Her lovers were said to include Fidel Castro, Ernest Hemingway, Georges Simenon, Colette, and Frida Kahlo. Referring to reports of her bisexuality, President Macron said, ‘Next to a man one night, in the arms of a woman another … In just a few years, Josephine Baker creates her legend.’

Her popularity in Europe was not replicated in the USA. When she was touring there in 1936,   Time magazine referred to her as a ‘Negro wench … whose dancing and singing might be topped anywhere outside of Paris’; other critics said her voice was ‘too thin’ and ‘dwarf-like’. Desperately disappointed, she returned to France. In 1937, she married French industrialist Jean Lion and became a French citizen

When war broke out, Baker joined the Resistance, saying, ‘France gave me everything. I am ready to give my life for her.’ In September 1939, she was recruited by the Deuxième Bureau, the French military intelligence agency. Her fame allowed her to gather information while socialising with Germans and Italians at embassies, ministries, and nightclubs. As an entertainer, she had an excuse for moving around Europe and South America carrying information for transmission to England. Later, in 1941, she visited the French colonies in North Africa. The stated reason was Baker’s health (she was recovering from pneumonia), but in reality the travelling enabled her to continue helping the Resistance. For her war efforts she was awarded the Resistance Medal and the Croix de Guerre and was named a Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur by General de Gaulle.

In 1947, she married her fourth husband, the French composer and conductor Jo Bouillon. They lived at the Château des Milandes in the Dordogne with what she referred to as her ‘rainbow tribe’, twelve adopted children from all over the world. On Tuesday the president listed their names: ‘Akio and Teruya from Japan; Luis from Colombia; Jari from Finland; Jean-Claude, Moise, and Noel from France; Brian and Marianne from Algeria; Koffi from the Ivory Coast; Tara from Venezuela; and Stellina from Morocco.’

While her career continued to flourish after the war, Baker also became increasingly active in promoting the Civil Rights movement in the USA. When Martin Luther King made his ‘I have a dream’ speech in Washington in 1963, Baker stood next to him wearing her French air force uniform and medals. It was, she said, the happiest day of her life.

Forty-six years after her death in 1975, Josephine Baker is only the sixth woman to enter the Panthéon, and the first black woman to do so. A coffin holding earth from four places dear to her – St. Louis, Missouri, her birthplace; Paris; the Château des Milandes; and Monaco, where she is buried near her close friend Princess Grace – was carried up the red-carpeted Rue Soufflot by six pall-bearers from the French air force. (Baker held the rank of second lieutenant during the Second World War.) Her military decorations were carried behind the coffin.

In his eulogy, President Macron said that with Josephine Baker ‘for the first time, a certain idea of liberty, of the fête’ entered the Panthéon: ‘You enter our Panthéon because, born American, there is no one more French than you.’ He summarised her life: ‘War heroine. Fighter. Dancer. Singer. Black defending blacks, but above all a woman defending human beings.’

There are various clips of the Panthéon ceremony on YouTube, but I would recommend these two, the first for the singing, and the second for the impressive lightshow on the facade of the Panthéon:

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There was a grim irony in the fact that the day of Josephine Baker’s entry into the Panthéon was also the day when Éric Zemmour, the far-right journalist and broadcaster, once convicted for incitement to racial discrimination, finally declared his candidature for the presidency. Bad cess to him, as my dad used to say.

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Things I’ve learnt this week:

Pope John XII was killed in the act of committing adultery by a jealous husband.

There’s a carpet shop in Dublin called ‘Lino Ritchie’. Cardiff has a tiling supplies outlet called ‘Bonny Tiler’. Bristol has a mobile kebab truck called ‘Jason Donervan’. Portsmouth has a locksmith called ‘Surelock Homes’.

Richard Wagner only ever wore pink silk underwear.

London: No mean city

A few days in London last week, visiting family and friends. Two long walks through the centre of the city made me realise that I am increasingly seeing it as a tourist. The first was one of the nicest London walks I know: from Waterloo station along the South Bank to the Millennium Bridge, and then across to St Paul’s and on to Leadenhall Market in the City. Normally I would walk back via Fleet Street and the Strand, but it was cold and I was knackered so I took the tube back to Charing Cross and strolled over the railway bridge to Waterloo.

The second walk, from Victoria station, took me through St James’s Park, Green Park, Piccadilly Circus, and Trafalgar Square to Soho.

The purpose of this second walk was a rendezvous with friends at the Photographers’ Gallery in Ramillies Street to see the Helen Levitt exhibition. This was an impressive display, but in the end I got museum fatigue. There were just too many images, many of them very similar. I thought the Vivian Maier exhibition at the Musée du Luxembourg, though smaller, was much more effective. A very nice lunch afterwards at the Wigmore in Langham Place, as recommended by Jay Rayner in The Observer.

The rest of my time was a wonderful hectic blur. There was fish and chips and bangers and mash. There was an ocean of bitter beer and a lake of Laphroaig whisky. The gastronomic highlight was probably the enormous toasted cheese sandwich at the Wigmore (‘a foot long, but only if you have size 24 feet’, according to Mr Rayner).

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While in London, I was struck again by the number of people not wearing masks in public. On trains on London Underground there were regular recorded messages saying you must wear masks in trains and stations, but the enforcement of this is non-existent. It seemed strange to go into a pub and not be asked for my pass sanitaire (health pass). Marks and Spencer’s, like most major stores, recommends that you wear masks, but again it is optional, at least in England. It is now compulsory in Scotland and Wales.

For some time now in France, the pass has been required in order to visit bars and restaurants, cinemas and sports grounds, and all other places of entertainment. They are compulsory if you work in the health sector or public services, and you need one if you travel by intercity train or aeroplane or go shopping in a mall. The pass proves that you have received both doses of the vaccine or are protected from Covid by other means. There have been angry protests throughout France, but 75 per cent of the population now carry one, a higher percentage than in any other European country.

Generally speaking, the passes have proved very effective, and this has done much to quieten down the protests. There was no post-holiday surge this autumn in France, and the numbers of cases and deaths from July to mid-October have been significantly lower than in the UK. Since then, however, the daily infection rate has risen rapidly, not just in France but across Europe.

While I was in London, President Macron appeared again on television in France. The 27-minute broadcast from the Elysée Palace was the president’s ninth since the onset of the Covid pandemic. Someone, I forget who, has described his tone in these broadcasts as that of a kindly family solicitor imparting bad news with regretful directness. This time, the president’s message was clear: ‘Get vaccinated to live normally’.

France had anticipated the so-called fifth wave by offering boosters – the third vaccination – to over-65s and those in other vulnerable categories. The take-up has been slow. Only a third of those eligible had booked appointments by the time of the president’s latest broadcast.

It was clearly time to up the ante. M. Macron did this. From December 15, people in the eligible group will need to show the third injection on their pass sanitaire or it will become invalid. No third injection will effectively mean getting locked down.

On Thursday this week there was a follow-up government announcement: the booster injection will now be offered to all adults from five months after their second injection, and from January 15 booster doses will gradually become a compulsory part of all adult health passes. After this date, any adult who has not received their booster seven months after their final dose will see their pass expire. This gives people two months after they become eligible for the booster to go for their extra injection. The health pass app will also be adapted to include an alert system warning someone when they are reaching their booster-dose deadline.

In a further ratcheting-up of pressure, PCR and antigen tests will only be valid health pass proof for 24 hours. Test results can currently be used to create a health pass valid for 72 hours, but the recent rise in case numbers has pushed the government to tighten the time frame. This change will come into force on Monday (November 29). I think these are sensible tactics by the government. Slowly but surely, without being legally compulsory, getting inoculated will be the only way to avoid lockdown

More by luck than judgement, I had booked my booster jab on Tuesday a couple of days before the new regulations were announced. Since then, all the local centres have been flooded with calls, and Madame will have to travel to Montmorillon, over thirty miles away, in a week’s time. However, she’s not complaining. Before the announcement, she was looking at waiting until January before she would be eligible.

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Things I’ve learnt this week:

Heinz baked beans were first sold in Britain at Fortnum & Mason as an exclusive luxury imported from America.

There are only two mentions of sneezing in the Bible.

At the end of Roman mime plays, audiences could demand that the female lead strip on stage.

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Stop press: The UK Health Secretary Sajid Javid has announced today that face masks will be compulsory in shops and on public transport in England from Tuesday in response to the new Omicron variant. This seems sensible, but I don’t envy the London Underground staff whose job it will be to police it.

We are off to Scotland tomorrow morning to visit Madame’s parents. Flight times dictate that this means a trip to Paris this afternoon and an overnight stop at a hotel in Charles de Gaulle airport. Ryanair used to fly direct from Poitiers to Edinburgh, but that awfully nice Mr O’Leary stopped this service a few months after we arrived.

Because of Covid, this will be the first time we’ve seen them in over two years, and we are really looking forward to it. They live in Blairgowrie, just on the edge of the Highlands, and an added bonus is that the scenery there is particularly stunning at this time of year.

We have our own little bit of Scotland here in Poitiers, in the oddly named Rue des Écossais (Street of the Scots) not far from the main square. It has the Prefecture at one end and the police station at the other, but I have learnt to my cost that any remarks about needing to keep an eye on the Scots are best avoided at home.

In view of our trip, I’ve been looking into why the street is so called, and it turns out that it’s all due to a man called Robert Irland. Born in Scotland, he was a professor of law at the University of Poitiers, and in 1502 he bought the land on which the street now stands. He planted it with trees and vines and built a house which he called ‘Les Écossais’.

The only other remotely Scottish link in the street I can find is that the building now housing the police station was once La Collège des Écossais. Built in 1923, it was a college for young girls, dedicated to teaching them what used to be known as domestic science. Above the door of the police station, one can still see the initials VP for Ville de Poitiers and the words Enseignement ménager (Home education). I quite like the idea of a Madame Jean Brodie teaching her crème de la crème how to bake scones.

I also discovered that during the last war, the SS set up their local headquarters at no. 13 Rue des Écossais but, again, I think it best not to make any flippant remarks about this at home.

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Quite by chance, on Monday I came across another Poitiers/Scottish link in the church of Saint-Porchaire in Rue Gambetta. I’d gone in to take a photo of the confessional box, as I’ve lately become slightly obsessed by these bizarre little structures. Looking both quaint and oddly sinister, they bring back memories of a Catholic childhood, when from the age of nine or ten, you were expected to enter one of them and ‘admit your sins’ to a man behind a screen. I can remember frantically trying to come up with two or three things that were sufficiently reprehensible to earn my penance of an Our Father or three Hail Marys but innocuous enough not to require any further cross-examination – ‘swearing’ and ‘losing your temper’ were always reliable. It was about that time that I first came across the phrase ‘having impure thoughts’. At that age I wasn’t quite sure what it meant, but I figured it was best avoided in the confessional.

‘Impure thoughts! Moi?’

Anyway, there I was in Saint-Porchaire taking my photo, when I noticed this stone set into the wall just by the confessional.

It’s a memorial to Adam Blackwood, who was born in Dunfermline in 1539. Orphaned when very young, his education was sponsored by his great uncle, Robert Reid, Bishop of Orkney. He studied at the University of Paris and then, thanks to the patronage of Mary, Queen of Scots, became a practising lawyer in Poitiers. He was a loyal servant to Mary and published various works criticising her treatment in England, along with volumes of poetry and religious meditation.

Robert Irland died in 1561, while Blackwood was still studying in Paris, so it’s unlikely they will have met, but I’m beginning to wonder how many other links there may be between Scotland and Poitiers. According to the memorial stone, the Blackwood line survived in Poitiers till 1754, so I think a trip to the archives in Rue Blaise Pascal might be interesting.

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Things I’ve learnt this week:

The medieval French made up their own saints, such as St Coquette, the patron saint of talkative women, and St Jambon, the patron saint of ham.

General Franco kept the mummified hand of St Teresa of Avila on his bedside table until his death.

The word papa means ‘pope’ in Italian, ‘shark’ in Swahili, ‘potato’ in Quechua, and ‘arse’ in Maori.

President Macron came to visit Poitiers on Tuesday. All very exciting – helicopters overhead, police cars everywhere. He was visiting the Palais de Justice to announce the opening of États généraux de la justice, a major review of the justice system in France – a headline-catching exercise, probably not unconnected with the coming presidential election.

There is growing concern about recent violent attacks targeting magistrates, but it would seem from their comments afterwards that the local judiciary were not particularly impressed by the President’s visit. ‘He says one thing and then the opposite – he tells us that justice must be faster but also that it must take time to reflect,’ complained one magistrate. ‘We are told that everything must be broken, and we are then given four months to rebuild it all. It is not serious,’ declared another.

The President had a more sympathetic reception when he took part in a charity football match last week. Watched by his wife Brigitte, he took to the pitch in Poissy, outside Paris, alongside former international defender Marcel Desailly and ex-Arsenal manager Arsène Wenger. Some ‘highlights’ of the game can be seen here.

Macron, who played football at university and is a keen tennis player, played midfield and had a fairly easy time of it, with overawed opponents retreating deferentially as he advanced with the ball.

Unsurprisingly, when a penalty was awarded, he was chosen to take it, and the goalkeeper didn’t seem too bothered about saving it. Still, I have to say he looks more convincing in football kit than one of his predecessors, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing.

Not to be outdone, Prime Minister Boris Johnson was showing off his own sporting prowess by jogging while at the recent Tory party conference, though with true British decorum he decided to do this while wearing a formal white shirt and a pair of black brogues.

Somehow the photo seems more credible if you imagine him being chased from Downing Street by a crowd of angry voters, just out of shot.

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I have mentioned in the past that Poitiers is a relatively quiet place. Even though students make up a significant element of the local population, there is a general lack of boisterousness in the air, and many of the local citizenry seem to live a quiet, almost hobbit-like existence behind closed doors. I used to put this down to an innate conservatism, but recently I have started to develop another theory – half of the population are permanently stoned.

There are several reasons for thinking this. Firstly, a recent survey has shown that, as a nation, France is the largest consumer of cannabis in Europe. According to the newspaper Aujourd’hui, there are about a million daily cannabis users, and 18 million people say they have taken the drug at some time: these are people ‘at all ages and in all walks of life. Whether you are unemployed, a student, a senior executive, a manual worker, a policeman, or a journalist, whether you live in the [upmarket]16th arrondissment in Paris or in a village in the Aisne, the joint is everywhere.’

Secondly, recent analysis shows that the decriminalisation of cannabis is now supported by a majority of French people: 51% are in favour, nearly twice as many as when the first study was carried out (27% in 1977).

Thirdly, in almost every city in France there has recently been a sudden rush to open shops offering cannabis-related products. In the past six months, at least five have opened up here in Poitiers. Some of these are franchised outlets, such as Deli Hemp in Rue Saint-Nicolas.

Others are small local shops, like Le Bistrot des Graines in Rue des Vieilles Boucheries.

They all sell a variety of cannabis-based oils, infusions, and mixtures that claim to reduce anxiety and depression, ease pain, and inhibit the symptoms of arthritis.

The sudden influx is due to a change in French law in November 2020, which makes it legal to sell products that contain the cannabis molecule cannabidiol (CBD) as long as they contain less than 0.2% of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the ‘stupefying’ ingredient that is found in other (still illegal) forms of cannabis.

While these shops are careful to promote the health-enhancing aspects of their products, I can’t help thinking that shops with names like ‘High Society’ and ‘Dream Flower’ may have a slightly wider customer base in mind.

One thing that is interesting is that CBD products are also legal in the UK, but as far as I am aware, there has been nothing like the spread of new outlets for them there. One might think that, given the steady resurgence of Covid cases, the fuel shortages, and the emptying supermarket shelves, anyone selling a product that reduces stress and anxiety would be on to a sure-fire winner.

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A recent tweet on Twitter asked, What’s your most tenuous claim to fame? My dad’s godfather was Bruce Forsyth’s dentist.

Some of the responses:

Ronnie Corbett once held me as a baby.

My great-grandad was converted to Catholicism by the priest who was the inspiration for Father Brown.

My grandfather met Johnny Weissmuller. Also, Brian Eno once called our house.

My dad went to the same school as Prince Charles, but not at the same time.

I had pie and chips with Gloria Gaynor in a Coventry pub.

I sang at Fidel Castro’s niece’s wedding.

Richard Burton told me to ‘fuck off’ when I was about 13.

Tom Jones once came to my parents’ country pub for a pint. I was in Belgium at the time.

Mum’s cousin Dave’s dog, Pickles, discovered the Jules Rimet Trophy after it was stolen just before the 1966 World Cup.

My dad – a dentist – once threw Fanny Craddock out of his surgery for being bolshy. My dad was a horrible bloke, so my loyalties lie with Fanny.

My own claim to fame is that I once stood next to (Lord) Melvyn Bragg in the gents’ toilets at the Almeida Theatre in London. We did not speak.

A quiet few weeks since my last postcard. A trip to Orléans. A flying visit to the UK to see family and friends. The most interesting thing to occur here in Poitiers was probably my encounter with a delightful lady called Emmanuelle, whom I bumped into when she was walking her pet pig, Banda, down Rue de la Chaîne.

Actually, looking back, I’m not sure who was walking whom. Whichever it was, Banda certainly looked at peace with the world.

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September means la rentrée here in France, a time when the whole country seems to wake up and get back to work. Smaller independent businesses, including boulangeries, florists, pharmacies, and clothes shops, which have been closed for some or all of August, reopen. Students return to schools and universities. Parliament resumes its sessions, in what is going to be a busy period leading up to next year’s Presidential election. La rentrée littéraire sees hundreds of new books published. There is a general sense of renewal in the air, and it is heightened this year, as we now appear to be over the latest surge of Covid cases, the ongoing vaccination programme giving cause for cautious optimism.

Here in Poitiers, an aspect of this process is the annual Journée des Associations, which was held at the weekend in Parc Blossac. Charitable organisations, sports, and social clubs set out their stalls to try to attract new members. The word association is a bit of a mouthful in French, having six syllables: ‘ah so see ah see yon’. For convenience, it’s usually abbreviated to asso. When I suggested visiting the Journée to Madame, she would only go on condition that I promised not to make any jokes using this abbreviation. It turned out to be good fun, and I have put my name down as a volunteer for the local banc alimentaire (food bank). I must admit I was slightly disappointed that my previous experience at the Ely Food Bank (assistant in charge of baked beans and other tinned tomato-sauce-based products) didn’t seem to count for much.

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Some organisations have had a more successful rentrée than others, Supermarket chain Monoprix got themselves into a spot of bother by selling rentrée orange juice, which sounds pretty innocuous until you look more closely at the bottles.

They are covered with drawings and phrases more normally seen on public convenience walls: things like … well, I’ll let you read them yourselves. As with all images, if you click on it, it will appear in another window (only do this if you are over 18, obviously). A complaint from the police union Alliance Police Nationale,objecting to the acronym ACAB, has led to the bottles being withdrawn.

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Much in the news last weekend about 18-year-old Emma Raducanu winning the US Open tennis championship, but it was another sporting story that caught my eye. Tyrone clinched the All-Ireland Football Championship title by beating Mayo 2-14 to 0-15 in the final at Dublin’s Croke Park stadium, the first time Tyrone have beaten Mayo in the past thirteen years.

What makes it fascinating is that this is another example of the ‘Mayo Curse’ that has prevented the county from winning the title since 1951. The curse was placed as the Mayo team were returning home having beaten Meath in that year’s final in Dublin. They were being driven through the village of Foxford when they passed a church where a funeral was under way. The players did not get out to pay their respects, and the enraged priest uttered the fateful words: ‘For as long as you all live, Mayo won’t win another All-Ireland.’

And so it has come to pass. Despite its small population of 130,000, Mayo has reached the final ten times since 1951, but to no avail. The curse endures, as there is one member of the 1951 winning team still alive – Paddy Prendergast, aged 94. Paddy should probably tread carefully if Mayo do well next year.

I sympathise with Mayo supporters but, judging by Fulham’s measly trophy collection, I suspect their team bus has been racing past funerals throughout their history.

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Overheard on my trip to the UK:

In the Alexandra pub, Wimbledon. Two men in their forties, dressed identically like Tweedledum and Tweedledee, baseball caps, white polo shirts, shorts, and trainers. One eating fish and chips, with condiments in small ramekins:

Non-eater: ‘Don’t do that.’

Eater: ‘What?’

Non-eater: ‘You’re double-dipping, ketchup and tartare.’

Eater: ‘So?’

Non-eater: ‘You can’t do that. It’s turning my stomach.’

In M&S Wimbledon. Elderly couple:

She: ‘I think we’ve still got that tin of custard open in the fridge.’

He: ‘Yeah, and the haddock.’

Young girl to a friend in Pret a Manger, King’s Cross station:

‘I like cheese and onion, but it always makes me …’ [she puts her hands around her mouth and silently says ‘fart’].

On the Paris–Poitiers train home. One of a group of four Englishmen eating their own weight in hot junk food:

‘There was this sushi place in Edinburgh. All you can eat for 12 quid. Fuck me, did me and Eric tear into it.’

Where is everyone ? La Gazette , Rue Gambetta

We have a new neighbour. A young woman, whom we’ve yet to meet, has moved into no. 22. She replaces the two young women who moved in about a year ago. Neither we nor any of our other neighbours really got to know them, and they have now gone to live in Canada. We got this from Jacqueline, the actress and theatre director who lives directly opposite us at no. 20. At no. 24, on the other side of the new neighbour, is Brigitte, who is retired, though I’m not sure what she actually did for a living. Opposite Brigitte and two doors up from us is Colette, the 80-year- old grande dame who is livelier than many women half her age. She is an active member of Les Soroptimistes, a sort of French Women’s Institute, and is forever gadding about on little jaunts around France. Between Colette and us live Jean-Claude and Bernadette, whom I’ve mentioned before in these pages. On our other side, at no. 17, lives Inès, a shy, polite Spanish lady who keeps herself very much to herself. We all get along well, and I think we’ve been generally very lucky in our neighbours.

Alert readers will have noticed something a little unusual in the above account. Apart from myself, Jean-Claude is the only male living in our immediate vicinity. There are a couple of others, further up and down the street, but I’ve never spoken to any of them. At the occasional neighbourly get-together we attend, it is always just Jean-Claude and myself. In fact, at the last two such gatherings, a drinks party in Jacqueline’s garden and a small soirée at Colette’s to celebrate her birthday, Jean-Claude was away for some reason, and I was the only male present. This doesn’t bother me particularly, but it is a symptom of a more general trend here in Poitiers and something that has puzzled me for some time – a seemingly general shortage of single men.

Now, this needs qualifying. A widely quoted Poitiers statistic is that one in four of the population is a student, and in term-time it is easy to believe. The bars and cafés are full of young people, and amongst them it is normal to see groups of young men sitting and drinking together. It is older men I am referring to, in particular those over the age of 40. When out and about, these seem nearly always to be in the company of their female partners. What is noticeably missing are the clusters of men that I’d got used to seeing in bars wherever I’ve lived in the past. I said ‘single men’ earlier, but these groups usually consist of both bachelors and men who are or were once married. They meet a few times a week, sometimes more, for a couple of drinks, sometimes more. They are a feature of most English pubs, sitting or standing at the bar, chatting, arguing, reminiscing, telling and retelling anecdotes (‘talking bollocks’ in Madame’s succinct phrase). I had no trouble finding bars containing similar groups when I lived in Paris and Prague. On trips to other French cities, I’ve identified bars which, even if empty at the time, had something about them that indicated they were the sort of place where such groups regularly congregate.

Here in Poitiers, these individuals are conspicuous only by their absence. The nearest thing I have found are the two sports bars, the cavernous and slightly soulless Wallaby’s in Rue du Plat d’Étain, and the much more convivial Drop ’n Shoot in Rue du Chaudron d’Or. The latter is run by a very amiable Bill Murray lookalike, and I sometimes go there to watch a French Ligue 1 game. I sit with a few others (the French are generally more interested in the English Premier League than their own) watching the big screen, drinking beer, and eating the complimentary crisps.

The age range is from about 20 to my age. Conversation is usually limited to the occasional shout of derision, delight, or disgust at what is happening on screen. It rarely goes beyond asking which team one wants to win. I attempt the odd conversational gambit, one of many such tried and tested standbys for when conversations flag: ‘How important do you have to be to be assassinated and not just murdered?’, ‘What was Rembrandt’s first name?’, but with limited success. I’ve been working on some more suitable French equivalents: ‘Vous préférez le camembert ou le roquefort?’ Not great, but it’s a start. I know that in the overall scheme of things this is not very important, but I do sometimes get nostalgic for those occasions where a companionable silence is suddenly broken by ‘Leslie Phillips, dead or alive?’

A recent series of articles in the local paper may have offered a clue to the reason for this odd state of affairs. They have been focusing on Poitiers residents and their hobbies. Noticeably, all of the ones I’ve seen so far have been male and over 40. Here are a few examples.

This is Jean-Claude Paumier, a former maths teacher at the Lycée Victor-Hugo who collects sabliers (hourglasses).

Jean-Claude and the sands of time

Jean-Claude now has over 3,000 of these. I imagine it must be fun to set the largest one going and then see if he can turn all the others over before it runs out.

Next is Philippe Breton, who has turned his basement into a museum of Bruce Springsteen artefacts.

Phililppe. Born To Run. Maybe.

There’s a nice little film here in which he tells of his years of following Bruce in France and the USA. His ultimate ambition is to invite ‘The Boss’ home to see the museum and share a whisky and cigar with him. All well and good, but it did rather remind me of the Alan Partridge episode where he meets his biggest fan.

Finally, there is Pascal Audin, a local artist and what I would call a collector’s collector. Pascal proudly declares himself a chionosphérophile, sibilumophile, tupiphiliste, arctophile, pyrophiliste, and signopaginophile, which, in old money, means that he collects snow globes, whistles, spinning tops, teddy bears, cigarette lighters, and bookmarks.

Pascal with some of the 89,000 snow globes in his collection

Now, these fine chaps and their ilk are to be commended for their zeal and devotion to their pursuits. Somehow, though, I have a hunch you won’t be seeing them sitting in a bar together, trying to remember the names of all the actors in the Magnificent Seven. It would appear, then, that Poitiers is a city of hobbyists. Maybe I should give in gracefully and start collecting garden gnomes.

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This will be the last Postcard from Poitiers for a few weeks. I need to do some work on the website, and I am trying to start a French version – mostly consisting of photographs initially. I plan to restart this site in mid-September.

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Things I’ve learnt this week:

The official retirement age for Russian men is two years above their average life expectancy.

In 1930, a radium-infused jockstrap called the Scrotal Radiendocrinator went on the market, claiming to boost sexual virility.

The ploughman’s lunch was invented in 1956 by the English Country Cheese Council.